How do I combine WebResource.axd and ScriptResource.axd files so as to result in less requests to my ASP.NET server?

Question

On a site I'm working on, the pages are generating 45 external WebResource.axd and ScriptResource.axd files so the broswers have to request all 45 references. That's a lot of references so I'd like to know if there is a way that all of those requests could be combined into one request? I've seen that the Script Manager is supposed to be able to do something regarding that but I haven't seen any results with the WebResource.axd and ScriptResource.axd files.

How would I go about getting these to all combine?

Answer 1

As the others have stated, using the ASP.NET AJAX Toolkit's ToolkitScriptManager rather than the default ASP.NET ScriptManager will allow you to do some script combining, including your own scripts embedded as resources - there's a good post about it at Script combining made easy.

If you have the luxury of using ASP.NET 3.5 SP1, then there are some further additions to the ASP.NET ScriptManager that allow you to combine a lot more scripts, including general .js files in your solution into one script call.

Check out the video here:

Using Script Combining to Improve Performance